Strips of metal, such as may be later formed by stamping, are coiled into what are commonly termed mults. The current art is known to employ means for dispensing slit mults which have been coaxially attached to one another by means of tabs. In the art, such a cluster of coils is provided with a removable but fixed center core which engages all the mults and a horizontal mandril. This is called eye horizontal dispensing. The uncoilers may be driven or nondriven. Upon rotation of the cluster, peeling of the strips from the mults is effected by a combination knife assembly which has the effect of detaching the strip of one mult from another, during the dispensing of the strip. Because of the requirement of a preset core, overhead cranes are required to set such clusters of coils upon an overhung mandril, eye horizontal, prior to strip dispensing. This handling often results in damage to a given cluster of mults; moreover, such systems do not satisfactorily compensate for distortionally formed or asymmetric clusters of mults. Again, in the handling thereof, time-consuming placement and replacement of the adjustable center core is required, often in an effort to correct the distortion without wholly reforming the cluster of mults. Such present day methods of handling of multiple mults of strip materials are additionally such as to make it difficult in cramped quarters to present the materials substantially horizontally to the press line where the strips are cut, formed, or shaped.
With these deficiencies in mind, each resulting in costly and time-consuming handling, the invention has as its objectives the most expeditious handling of coiled strips within the metes and bounds of modern day technology. Whereas the invention is described in terms of handling flat coiled metal stock, it is equally useful in the controlled dispensing of other stock having variant cross section configuration and composition characteristics and wherein multiple coils are stacked upon one another for ease of storage and transfer by lift truck and pallet. The invention in its broadest aspects successfully addresses the dispensing of coiled flexible materials, stacked into mults without attachment to one another.